“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“You are the one who dislikes what you are. I did not want you to hate me too.”
I narrowed my eyes, sure he was leaving something out. “And why else?”
“Because my vow is to protect you and others from witches and sorcerers who would do them harm.” He took my hand. “You already had the mark of one on you. Now a second one has touched you. I wish I had never made that second promise.”
I thought about when Max put the mark on my foot. My face must have matched the color of the tomato sauce. “What second promise?”
He shook his head. “Part of it was to keep it a secret.”
“Fine. Okay, you’re right about the mark. I allowed a wizard named Maximilian to put one on me so he would know I’m in danger.”
“I sense no malice in that. The wizard Maximilian, although not a friend to our kind, is not our enemy like other wizards. I am more concerned about someone else, the one who wielded the tranquilizer gun.”
“How did you…” My mouth fell open. “You were following me the whole time!”
He nodded, his face serious again. “And I counted on the Crystal Pines pack to protect you. They failed.”
“You will not hurt them,” I said and stood. “Do you know how much we’ve needed someone like you to help us, to guide us? We’re novices at this werewolf thing.”
“Lonna, I want to, but I cannot teach your whole pack because…” His fingers tightened on mine, but I yanked them away.
“Because…”
He only shrugged. “Others would consider them not worthy. You have been insulated from werewolf politics, and many are angry at these newcomers.”
“How dare you pass judgment? It’s not like it was our fault. And you’ve deceived me from the beginning.”
“I was under orders,” he said with a rueful smile. “I have a vow of obedience to follow.”
I paced to the window to put physical distance between the two of us and clenched my left fist until my fingernails pricked my palm. “Well, you obviously didn’t make one of chastity.”
“We broke from the church long ago. Celibacy doesn’t sit too well with the wolf nature, as you know.”
The heat in my face and cheeks increased to molten. “Get out. I can’t think with you being all hot and Italian over there.”
He walked behind me and caressed one shoulder while pushing my hair away from my neck. I stilled and willed myself not to lean into him. He grazed my neck with his teeth, and the sharpness of his canines startled me. There was some physical stirring in my belly and between my legs, but not as much as I expected.
“You’ve been holding back, Giancarlo,” I said to cover up my bewildering lack of response. Don’t tell me Max has ruined me for other guys. We didn’t even have sex! But thinking of him brought my parts to attention, and I closed my eyes.
“Denying one’s true nature can do that, Bellissima. I will love you as you’ve needed me to, as I couldn’t before now without revealing myself.”
Just stop talking… A flickering light caught my attention and made me open my eyes. The street lamps outside my window were blinking on and off in random patterns. It was like a splash of cold water.
“Giancarlo, the lights!”
He growled, but stopped caressing me and looked outside.
“Who is it?”
“A wizard who wants to harm you.” He buried his face in my hair.
“No shit.” The lights went out, and the world outside was plunged into darkness. Thick clouds covered the waning moon.
“We must move away from the window. Then I will change and confront him for you.”
I shook my head. “Thanks, sweetie, but this is my fight.” As much as I hated to do it with my whole being acutely aware of his proximity and needing something to release the sexual tension of the past few days, I pushed him away and walked toward the door, where I turned off the lights. Now the only illumination came from the flickering candles on the table.
He caught my arm. “I am sworn to protect you. You cannot go out there alone.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but he was right. With such a vague threat—flickering lights could mean Max, after all—I wasn’t feeling in enough danger to change, so I definitely was in no shape to confront anyone. “Fine. I can’t change, anyway.”
It was Giancarlo’s turn to frown, and he looked sinister in the candlelight. “Not even with the aconite?”
“No, not unless I feel I’m in mortal danger.”
“Oh, Bellissima, what happened to you?” He traced my jaw with his fingertips.
“I wish I knew. It was something in the tranquilizer dart in the woods, some sort of medication that messes with brain chemistry. I don’t know what’s worse, that I can only change if I feel my life is in danger, or that I can’t talk to Wolf-Lonna anymore.”
Giancarlo said something in Italian that I’m pretty sure his mother would have washed his mouth out with soap for. “Then you definitely can’t fight them. They have separated you from your guardian. That is not good.”
“Right. Because the evil Benandanti might be able to claim my soul. But why can’t I fight?”
“You cannot fight in a centuries-old war as half a person, Bellissima.”
“Wait a second… A war?”
“Si. The wizards and wolves have been at war for centuries. That’s why there are so few families of mixed blood.”
Something in Aunt Alicia’s diary came back to me about how she and my mother used procedures and props that sounded like spells to ensure I wouldn’t share Aunt Alicia’s fate. “But I’m part of one of them.”
Giancarlo took my hand. “I have much to explain to you, but first I must go outside and ensure you are not threatened.”
He went into a back bedroom, and a minute later, a black wolf came out. Even with a canine face, his eyes sparkled with good humor.
“Do not let anyone else in while I am gone,” he cautioned, and then slipped out the door, which I locked behind him.
I shook my head. Trust an Italian to talk about food and battle at the same time. And probably love too.
I cleared the table and brought the plates and candles into the kitchen. Putting up leftovers and washing dishes gave my hands something to do while my mind and my heart warred it out over the situation I was now in. No one was there with me, so I talked out loud since making things external can bring clarity. That was one of the reasons I wished there was a therapist somewhere who could help me with this bizarre situation.
“There probably is in Europe,” I muttered. “Perhaps I’ll just pop over there for the weekend. It would be better than staying here and letting Giancarlo fight my battles for me.”
To distract myself from my frustration and heartbreak, I imagined what a European jaunt to find other werewolves would be like. “Who to take? Giancarlo or Max?” My mind sifted through mental postcards of things that hadn’t yet happened, and I couldn’t help but notice it put Giovanni in aviator sunglasses standing in front of monuments and famous places and Max in more intimate settings, like cafes and a bed with rumpled sheets and breakfast in bed trays.
“Stop that,” I told it. “He’s not interested. He’s still mourning his Lady Simpet.
“Oh, he’s interested. Kisses don’t lie. At least that’s what Motown and all the other music people say.
“Well, he’s got his issues with us. Giancarlo is handsome and interested, and he’s a lot more psychologically attractive now that I know he’s not an alcoholic. He’s also inclined to give me a lot more information than Max.
“Yeah, but he was also in on the ‘keep Lonna from knowing what she is’ plan until just recently.
“I was also using him.” I cringed to say it, but it was true. He’d been an almost normal boyfriend and a fixture in my almost normal life. “I wonder what’s taking him so long and if I should fix coffee for the tiramisu.”
“Is there enough for three?” asked a voice I’d
resigned myself to never hearing again.
Chapter Twenty
I dropped a plate, which didn’t break but did splatter tomato sauce all over the floor. “Max, son of a bitch, do you have to scare me every single time?”
I glared at the seagull who now perched on the countertop. It shimmered and expanded, and he stood beside me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I forgot about your exaggerated startle response. Let me clean that up.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked and handed him a wad of damp paper towels.
“Cleaning your kitchen,” he replied. “I also sensed you’re in danger, so I pulled off the road at a rest stop, and here I am.” He looked around. “Is there danger here to anything but your health? Remember, your cholesterol is high.”
“Fuck my cholesterol, I’m still having the tiramisu. Oh, and the lights outside were blinking and then went dark. Giancarlo, with whom I was having a nice dinner, went to check it out.”
“Your aunt’s friend,” he said, his tone neutral.
“Yes, him.”
“Is he something more to you?”
I turned away to hide my smile. He kept his inflection perfectly formal and polite, but I heard an undercurrent of jealousy. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
A scratching at the door alerted me that Giancarlo wanted back in.
“Perhaps I should install a doggie door,” I said when I opened the front door.
“How degrading. Wizard!” He launched himself at Max, who had come out of the kitchen. Max tumbled to the side and out of sight, and as a seagull, flapped up to the counter and then to the top of a bookshelf, from where he glared at the snarling wolf below.
“He’s not a threat, Giancarlo. That’s the wizard Maximilian. You said you knew him.”
“Knew of him. Why is he here?”
“He sensed I was in danger. Go back to the bedroom and change, and you can tell me what you discovered, and we can figure out where to go from here.”
“My Bellissima, she is a take-charge woman, no?” he asked the seagull, who ruffled his feathers. I’m not sure if that was an agreement or an “I’m not talking to you” gesture. Giancarlo didn’t seem insulted. He went into the back bedroom to change back and dress, and Max landed on the floor and returned to his human form.
“All this shifting is a bit confusing,” I said. “Do you know who might be out there?”
“I would guess Henry and his crew, although street lamps aren’t his style. Perhaps Carrigan decided to come fetch you and take you into custody for your protection.”
“I’m not going,” I told him.
“Would you rather spend your life in fear worrying about every little light flicker or bit of radio static?”
I recalled the strange behavior of the lights in the breezeways and the radio static when he’d first come into my life. Before I could answer, Giancarlo—fully dressed— returned to the room and put his arm around my waist.
“She has no need of fear, wizard. She has a protector.”
I couldn’t believe his behavior, but it wasn’t exactly unwarranted considering we’d not officially broken up.
Max arched an eyebrow. “And what, exactly, are you protecting her from? Did you find anything out there?”
Giancarlo shifted his gaze. “Only that the air smelled of the ocean, which is odd since we are in a landlocked state.”
“Henry,” Max and I said at the same time.
“But why would he be hanging around?” I asked. “He seems to be the ‘barge in and take what he wants’ kind of guy.”
“Perhaps he is observing you or testing your defenses.”
“Or perhaps it was Carrigan coming to get me and backing off when you appeared because he thinks you’re going to haul me in.”
Max shrugged. “He obviously doesn’t know you well if he thinks you’re going to come without a fight. I prefer other methods of persuasion.”
“Well,” I said and stepped away from Giancarlo. “It seems that a wizard and a werewolf are good defenses. How about you guys stick around and protect me? And by the way,” I added before anyone could start arguing, “I’m sleeping alone.”
Not that I particularly want to.
When I got up the next morning, Giancarlo was sprawled on the couch, and there was no sign of Max.
Oh, right, he wasn’t really here.
I put on some coffee and pulled out my laptop to peruse the morning’s news. I had just powered it on when Giancarlo woke with a snarl. I arched an eyebrow at him over my computer.
“What’s that about? Chasing rabbits in your sleep?”
A sliver of memory emerged from my pre-caffeine fog of a rabbit that had been—shall we say—disassembled by a predator, and I had the sense it had been me. From what Joanie had told me, I had been the one to catch and start eating the rabbit that first night the CLS got a true hold on me, but everything after the initial change had disappeared from my memory from the trauma of having been experimented on. Then the two rabbits Max had offered me, one cooked and one not, came to mind. He’s probably on the way to my apartment. The look in Giancarlo’s eye told me he would not take kindly to another surprise appearance.
“I would rather chase you, Bellissima.” The coffee maker beeped, and he poured cups for each of us and fixed it the way I liked with just a little sugar and mostly cream. His dark hair was tousled and his T-shirt wrinkled, and in his dishevelment, he looked eminently approachable.
What would it be like if we… I shook my head. There’s no use in thinking that way. We’re over.
He sat down across from me, and we looked at each other. The questions each of us wanted to ask piled up in the air between us more effectively than any other wall could have. What to ask? Where to start?
“Did you sleep with my Aunt Alicia?” Way to go with the subtlety, there.
He raised his eyebrows and blew on his coffee. For once, his jovial tone was gone, and he sounded like a much older man. Scratch that, he sounded like his true age, which I didn’t know, but which must be older than his mid-twenties appearance.
“What does it matter if I did?” he asked, and I was reminded of the fleeting expression on his face from the night before when he brought to mind a mafioso.
“It makes things a bit awkward, don’t you think?”
“Like your new boyfriend appearing here last night before you’ve even broken up with me?”
Touché. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Bugiardo.”
“Which means…”
“Bullshit. You liar. I have seen the way he looks at you, like you and he own pieces of the other’s heart.”
I dropped my gaze so he wouldn’t see the hope flare in my eyes. “Whatever it seems, we have no formal agreement. We haven’t slept together.”
A hand gesture, which I could infer the meaning of easily enough. “It is only a matter of time.” He leaned forward. “What happened?”
“He was sent to observe me, and then he started to protect me. He saved me from the evil Benandanti who wanted to take my soul when they missed the opportunity for Aunt Alicia’s, and then he filled me in on some important details that you neglected to tell me.”
Now he looked away, and it became apparent he’d been hiding a lot from me all along. I had underestimated him, but no longer.
“What do I need to know, Giancarlo? Why did you get involved with me and never enlighten me as to what I am and who my family is?”
“Your aunt and your mother wished it so, but I have been thinking about it, and since they are both gone, I feel I am released from my promise.” He exhaled like he finally let a secret escape into the world, and whatever may come of it, he was no longer responsible. “They felt that even the knowledge might make the change happen. That is why your aunt and I had our disagreement. We had been lovers, yes, but once you came along, she made me vow in a moment of passion that I would not drag you into your family heritage or problems, which put me in conflict with my o
wn vows.”
“Why not tell me? She said words have power, but keeping this from me obviously didn’t work to save me from it.”
“She and your mother were trying to save you from the Benandanti and other things this ‘curse’ brings. They hoped your wizard blood, as faint as it may be, would with the right spells and manipulations be enough to keep your werewolf heritage from emerging. She only wanted you to have a normal life.”
I drummed my fingers on the table, more recollections from my childhood piling up. How I had never been allowed to have a dog. How the trips to my aunt’s home over the summer were a sacrosanct tradition no matter what was going on in my parents’ lives. I remembered arguments between my mother and father.
“Julia, why can we never go to the beach in July? Why do we always go to Georgia?”
“Because it’s good for Lonna to know her aunt.”
One time I’d gotten in trouble for throwing away the herb bundle that had been tied to the bedpost because I didn’t like the way it smelled.
“Your aunt made that especially for you,” my mother said. “Don’t hurt her feelings by discarding it.”
“But I hate it. It stinks!”
“There are things in there that are good for you. Just keep it there, and you’ll get used to the smell.”
“It worked too.”
“And that is why you are of so much interest to so many—because it worked until you were infected by a latent vector wielded by a weak wizard. You offer hope to some and fear to others that the situation can be reversed.”
I nodded. “And you didn’t want to reverse your promise, so you pretended to be a drunk, used aconite to spirit walk, and watched over me because you knew I was in danger.”
“I will always regret that I was unable to keep you from being shot by the tranquilizer.”
“You and me both. I’ve lost my inner wolf voice.”
“She is in there. I would sense it if she had been truly lost, but you must come to some sort of agreement with yourself before she returns fully.”
I slumped back. “What sort of agreement? I’ve apparently got two sides in conflict that will never be in accord with each other.”
Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Page 18